Analyse af 'Vodka on Sunday'

This short story from Ireland takes place in a Catholic home. The family, which is consisting of Mum Nina, Dad and their almost grownup daughter the narrator, often join the Mass at the church. On the surface this family appear like a family with a good conscience.

The mother Nina is in some way trying to keep up her relationship with her almost grownup daughter. To make that happen I think she invites her into her drinking problem, which she is also hiding for her husband. Nina tells her daughter about her youth and how she wanted to become a nun but that her poor family made it impossible. Nina also keeps on convincing her daughter that she really does trust her. It seems like Nina is trying to win her trust and her acceptance. She might feel that she has neglected her because of her drinking. Or maybe she just needs her to be on her side because what she wants to tell her daughter is so terrible that she might dissociate from her.

The daughter enjoys these little moments with her mother. Maybe she is aware that their relationship has suffered by the fact that she is growing up. Her reaction to her mother’s will to trust her is dissociating. “God, she trusts me. I’m not sure at all that I can be trusted, I’m not sure I want to be trusted.” Why doesn’t she want to be trusted? It seems she has a really bad conscience. She describes the actual “conspiracy”, as she calls it, like a dream or a nightmare. Hazy so she only can she the silhouette of her mother and only her laughing. And when she enters the kitchen to make coffee she says that her legs feel heavy. So is all of this just a dream or is she just drunk? She also mentions that her mother dreams again. Maybe this drinking is a getaway for her mother to a world where she can be a little closer to her dream. This mother and daughter relationship is very normal. The mother is really trying to connect with her daughter before she loses her when she grows up and move away from home. Maybe Nina has done too much for her daughter through the years. The daughter seems indolent and careless. She is a really good dancer but she can’t or maybe won’t she herself as a teacher. And it is thanks to her mother that she got an education because she was the one who called all the institutions to find the right place where her daughter could have good swimming lessons. The daughter doesn’t seem interested in her own life. This “Vodka on Sunday” is the one and only day a week where mother and daughter can speak freely because the alcohol takes away the inhibitions so there is not this awkward mother-daughter relationship which holds on the real opinions, position and attitude. When they are in the influence of alcohol they can talk woman to woman and not woman to child, which I think they both prefer. Nina decides that she wants to tell her daughter something important, but the daughter won’t hear it if she is under the influence of alcohol, because she doesn’t want her mother to regret bursting out a secret when she maybe can’t remember it the next day. And so, her daughter will never know the secret about her mother. Maybe the narrator, the daughter, already knows the secret? “And I mourned for the daughter I could have been if I had known the whole story”. That sounds like she at the time she writes this story she already knows her mothers secret. Maybe she also knows it at the time her mother is drunk she wants to tell her but she just doesn’t want to here it anymore. The secret could be about her mother bad days when she was young? Maybe the whole nun-story was made up?